The other thing not listed here was the fact the online persona Drew was using was not created by Drew, but by her accomplice. In addition, several of the emails that may have helped send this little girl over the edge were also sent by this other person. A person who was given immunity to testify against Drew.

This whole case is a farce. Making TOS violations equivalent to hacking is a horrible precedent, and will undoubtedly come back to bite us later.

Some websites and services have decent and meaningful TOS agreements, and I don't want to dismiss or take away from their value, but creating the potential for any/all TOS violations to become criminal offenses is disgusting. TOS agreements exist between the provider and subscriber, and therefore any violations there should be worked out between them, not the state or federal authorities. A worst case scenario resulting from a TOS violation should be the service in question being denied, not jail time.

This is just asinine.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/489/35318#35318